North Carolina child custody laws

Asked over 4 years ago - Charlotte, NC

• Child Custody
• Child Custody Laws
• Family
• Family Law

I live in NC. My husband and I are recently seperated and have an 18-month old son. We are no longer together because of my husband's awful temper, verbal abuse, and the hostile environment he created for me and our son - including yelling, name calling, etc... (toward me, but around our son) Me and my son are currently living with my parents and in a much better situation. The father kept him last weekend, and although I did not have complete ease about it, I didn't want to deny my son the right to see his dad. My soon-to-be ex recently contacted me to see if we could go to counseling, and I, in a nice way, denied because we have tried counseling, but it hasn't worked and my husband wasn't always willing to go or do what he needed to do. I feel it is a better situation for my son to be in a good environment than just to have his parents together - I stayed and worked on the marriage for a while because of my son but got to the point that realized it was worse for him to be in that house. My soon-to-be ex got mad after I said no to getting back together and proposed the most obscure, ridiculous custody agreement with my son - saying that he would have him 3 weekends a month, with a over-night stay on Tuesday on his off-weekend, followed by a Wednesday teh following week- just ridiculous. I told him that that wouldn't work and I would agree to him having our son 2 weekends a month and split holidays; stressing the point that his "plan" was not consistent enough for an 18-month old and would only confuse him more. He got mad and is now saying he is going to file for sole cusotdy, giving me "visitation". What do I do? I can agree to 2 weekends a month, which is what I see 99% of fathers getting and I don't want to file for sole custody myself and waste money and hurt our son- I don't mind him seeing our son based on the terms I stated and don't want to deny our son the right to see his father, but at the same time, I don't feel that he is a good father, given his temper and anger issues. He has never hit our son, that I know of, but I can't say that he never would. I'm a good mother - don't have any alcohol, drug, etc...issues and don't see how he could ever get sole custody, but it still worries me. I know he is doing this to either scare me into staying with him, to satisfy his own control-issues, or both. Should I file for sole custody; what if he files first - do I have any choice about denying the case, or do I automaticcally become the "defendant" in the case? Do I need to worry about him getting sole custody with visitation for me?